Entries tagged with the game

What shows me is that there are a lot of people who experience a reflexive hatred towards any preceived failure. From a young age, people will take their ability to win or lose at any number of trivial contests or challenges far too seriously. It is impressed upon us that games aren't for playing, but for winning. So, when presented with any situation where loss is inevitable, they become enraged and will do everything in their power to convince themselves that they simply did not lose.

They'll accuse their opponents (if any) or cheating, say the rules are broken and need to be changed, that the field of play is imbalanced, or the referees are blind. And when things reach their worst, they'll break down and start screaming about how this game is stupid and they were never playing anyway. We've all done it at some point, and we've all seen others do it too.

This whole chain of thought is easily stirred up buy something like The Game, which is ultimately little more than saying "You lose" to someone over and over again. Losing doesn't cost you anything, and not-losing doesn't gain you anything, so there's not reason to react to this at all. But it still gets people. They either try to impose a way to win, or take their ball and go home. But whatever they may try they'll still know it's there, that they're still losing this arbitrary and trivial game, and it gnaws at their souls.

Frankly, I think it's quite retarded, and a waste of brain cycles that could be better spent elsewhere.

But the anti-meme / anti-mindvirus of today's XKCD (http://xkcd.com/391/) is amusing, and would provide the perfect way to screw with some people, primarily because of the above reflection. I may have to doodle on chalkboards later. :D